At the time of the Hubble observations on November 2, 2013, the comet was 0.95 astronomical units (88 million miles) from the Sun. The comet was 1.18 astronomical units (109 million miles) from Earth.

About
the Data

Data Description:

The image was created from Hubble data from proposal 13229 by the Hubble Heritage Team, PI: Z. Levay, M. Mutchler, C. Christian, L. Frattare, W. Januszewski, M. Livio, J. Mack, and J. Sokol (STScI/AURA), and K. Noll (NASA/GSFC). High-level science products for these data are available from the MAST archive at http://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/ison/.

Instrument:

WFC3/UVIS

Filters:

F438W (B) and F775W (i')

Exposure Date:

November 2, 2013

Exposure Time:

29 minutes

About
this Image

Credit:

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Release Date:

November 18, 2013

Color:

This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3/UVIS instrument. Several filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: